Wednesday 8 May 2013

101 Curiosity: How do you guys normally stitch?

Hi guys

I know that there are many of my fellow bloggers have already brought some of the stitching issues in their blogs with fantastic solutions but I have to pre claim that this blog is all about my curiosity about the problems that you guys met while stitching HAED.

As everybody probably knows that HAED charts are fairly big and require a good period of time to complete. HAED is always a challenge yet a pleasure to any stitchers.

Curiosity 1: Thread organization

Do you guys order thread for each chart or have a whole collection of DMC thread to sort by yourself?
How do you arrange thread for each project?

For me, I have a collection to sort out by myself. When there are colors that requires more than 5 (yes I have 5 collections of DMC, oopzzz), I will go down to the store or order online. I pre-sort threads before stitching and make something like this to keep those threads close to me:



 Curiosity 2: Hoops or frame?

I love hoops but frame does justice to HAED in my opinion. I experienced Qsnap, lap frame and millennium  frame while stitching DCD but I feel most comfortable with millennium frame as it does not mark my fabric and comfortably stretch the fabric to the tension that I wish for.

Curiosity 3: Cross country or parking method?

I have been trying both method in my current project. As HAED is fairly big, I divided each page in quarters and fill up with cross country method. It is really time consuming. Besides, I often mis-counted the symbols and led to unsatisfactory result. Good thing about cross country is I can keep the back of the fabric clean looking. On the other hands, parking method helps me to finish every single block neater and faster. For now, I am quite happy with this method except for the fact that the back of the fabric scares me out every time I attempt to look at it.

Overall, I think stitching method is very personal and it works differently depends on each stitcher's taste.

How do you guys think?

xoxo

Gwen



5 comments:

  1. Hi Gwen!
    I've only recently joined the Haed stitching fun! I have 2 charts but have only started one, which is enough!! It will take years to finish as I only stitch it from time to time in between projects. I've bought all my threads for the project (except for those I had available in my stash) and I stitch on a hoop. My frame is too small for the huge design I'm working on :D I'm more a cross country stitcher. I've never tried the parking method, I found all these threads being in the way too confusing!! :D This is my little insight on Haed stitching, as you said vary from one stitcher to an other. Have fun with your dandelions :) x

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    1. Dear Mii! Thanks for leaving comment! Glad to hear about your experience. I love working with hoops too but sometimes just too lazy to put in and take out. But i guess it works great for you! Having fun with dandelions now!

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  2. I have one full set of DMC which I use for most things replacing threads as they run low. For charts I make up floss cards with a hole for each colour. I then put one length of each colour required. As HAEDs as fairly confetti intense dye lot variations are not as much of a problem for most colours. However for colours that there are large blocks of (like the pink in Clara's hat) I would buy the required number of skeins from the same dye lot. For black I have a cone of 310 as a large number of my charts use a lot of it. I mostly use my q snap frame as I can take the stitching off very easily. For HAED designs I'm a definite parker, I find it the only way to deal with confetti. It does tend to make the back messy but when I tried cross country stitching I too found I kept missing stitches.

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    1. Oh dear, I would love to know where you can buy a DMC cone, i need it desperately ...

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    2. I got my cone of 310 on EBay but there are other online shops that sell them. Can't think of the names right now but a web search should give you some options. I love my cone I must keep a look out for another.

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